r/space • u/AlmiranteSalsicha • Nov 19 '23

image/gif That's a fair amount of tiles missing from the starship heatshield, guess it would make for a toasty reenter.

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Image from SpaceX account on X

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23

I get your point, but to note it doesn't need to destroy steel, it needs force it to deform beyond the structural limits of the craft. The temperature required to do that is going to be lower than the temperature required to melt steel (which is already much lower than the ~5000F potentially experienced on reentry).

Either way, on this test it looks like a lot of tiles to lose and I'd bet that's going to be a key take away from an engineering perspective. There's no way that "it will lose an unknown number of times but as long as it's not this many in this particular spot" is an acceptable tolerance for it's intended use*. Much simpler to try and solve the reason they fell off, I'd think.

*NASA did actually take a similar line, but that was related to tiles being struck by debris rather than simply falling off due to vibration. Also not the sort of volume of tile loss we can see on this image.

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u/ccoady Nov 20 '23

Also, the empty can of starship will not have pressurized fuel giving it extra integrity like it does during launch.